Skoda Rally Blog

Well, I guess I got lucky today – apart from one shower the weather has been OK all day, so I thought I’d get on with what I can on the cage. First up are the door “X” bars, which I’d made patterns for out of the 44mm exhaust tubing I’d bought to rough things out. So I cut all 4, and trimmed them to fit, but the car’s position means only the drivers’ side is properly accessible, so I just welded those in fully, again the lack of a windscreen made it much easier.

Next up, making some extras for the cage. Many cars have the cage braced to the shell – this is a good idea for the longevity of the shell, and also makes everything stronger in an accident, so I decided to make up some plates to go between the A-pillars and the cage. To make them look good they had to have holes put in them, and those holes need to be swaged (dented), making a much neater job, but meaning I needed to make up a tool to do a good job on them. However this meant they took a couple of hours to do, but they were well worth it once welded in – it looks like a much nicer job, apart from anything else!

Next up, there’s a V-shaped tube which goes behind the seats, and braces the tunnel, giving side-impact strength as well as strengthening the floor in an important place. However, here was the first “oh dear” moment of the whole fitting – now that the main hoop is not only welded in place, but braced by the door bars (which themselves are firmly welded to the B-pillars), it’s immovable. And I really should have put this part in before welding the rest of the cage in! Still, some (well, an hour’s) good trimming and planning followed by a bit of lateral thinking and some brawn has left the bar in the right place, with neatly trimmed ends. It’ll have to come out again to prep the areas for welding (one thing that is for sure with TIG is that correct preparation is vital – if the metal isn’t properly clean both mechanically and chemically, the weld is never 100%), but it’s in there, which at least means I can sleep tonight. So, at the end of day 3 (sort of), the cage looks like this:

Apparently it’s going to chuck it down tomorrow, so there will be no progress, other than me going to buy the steel needed for the rear stay plates as Custom Cages omitted to include enough to make front and rear plates! On top of that, I’m going to order a bunch of stuff, including the new extinguisher system…